The Berkeley Blog » Claude Fischerhttp://blogs.berkeley.edu
Provocative thinking from UC BerkeleyTue, 03 Mar 2015 18:54:15 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Snap decisions and racehttp://blogs.berkeley.edu/2015/01/09/snap-decisions-and-race/
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2015/01/09/snap-decisions-and-race/#commentsFri, 09 Jan 2015 19:37:21 +0000http://blogs.berkeley.edu/?p=12672One issue sparking off from the fiery debate around the police shootings of black men is the extent to which Americans simply react negatively to seeing black – whether it is a police officer making a life-and-death split-second decision about the threat a black man poses, a store clerk tracking a black customer in a store more intently than she would a white one, or an online shopper preferring to buy a device shown in a white hand rather than a black hand.

Explicit racial discrimination, often subconscious, is rarer than it was once was. And such discrimination does not explain ... More >]]>

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2015/01/09/snap-decisions-and-race/feed/2Which University?http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/12/01/which-university/
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/12/01/which-university/#commentsMon, 01 Dec 2014 17:50:20 +0000http://blogs.berkeley.edu/?p=12617As I start this post, I hear voices on bullhorns in Sproul Plaza (ground zero for the Free Speech demonstrations 50 years ago) calling Berkeley students to walk out of classes today (Nov. 24) to protest the tuition increases approved last week by the University of California Regents for the entire ten-campus system.

(Source)

Many details are being argued about — promises, costs, efficiencies, subsidies, and much more. I am not going to address the particulars here; I lack the expertise to do so. Instead, I draw upon my 42+ years at Berkeley and what I know about the history of ... More >]]>

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/12/01/which-university/feed/5When epidemic hysteria made sensehttp://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/10/21/when-epidemic-hysteria-made-sense/
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/10/21/when-epidemic-hysteria-made-sense/#commentsTue, 21 Oct 2014 19:46:45 +0000http://blogs.berkeley.edu/?p=12512As I write this post, it has been about three weeks since Thomas Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola in Texas. The media and political hysteria that has ensued in this country is amazing, statistically and historically. Unlike, say, tuberculosis or the flu, it is extremely hard to get infected with Ebola unless one is caring, without adequate protection, for an actively ill patient. Consider that none of the people who were living with Duncan has shown symptoms.

One person, Duncan himself, has died from Ebola in the United States in these three weeks. In contrast, during an average three-week period in ... More >]]>

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/10/21/when-epidemic-hysteria-made-sense/feed/1Vocabulary retrogressionhttp://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/10/15/vocabulary-retrogression/
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/10/15/vocabulary-retrogression/#commentsWed, 15 Oct 2014 15:27:57 +0000http://blogs.berkeley.edu/?p=12487As is now well-known, scores on “intelligence” tests rose strongly over the last few generations, world-wide – this is the “Flynn Effect.” One striking anomaly, however, appears in American data: slumping students’ scores on academic achievement tests like the SAT.

Notes of the decline starting in the 1960s sparked a lot of concern and hand-wringing. A similar decline is evident among adult respondents to the General Social Survey. The GSS gives interviewees a 10-item, multiple choice vocabulary test. (Practically speaking, vocabulary tests yield pretty much the same results as intelligence tests.) In over 40 years of the survey, a pattern emerged: ... More >]]>

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/10/15/vocabulary-retrogression/feed/0Telling stories vs. telling datahttp://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/07/10/telling-stories-vs-telling-data/
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/07/10/telling-stories-vs-telling-data/#commentsThu, 10 Jul 2014 23:25:20 +0000http://blogs.berkeley.edu/?p=12246In a just-released preview of his new book, Narrative and Collective Action, public-policy scholar Frederick W. Mayer of Duke University discusses the power of the well-told story for leaders of social movements and politicians. Starting with the example of Martin Luther King, Jr., Mayer recounts how effective leaders deploy stories rather than analyses. Stories compel us, he says, for almost biological reasons; they can draw people to collective action – if they are the right stories, ones that resonate with the listeners’ biases. Perhaps by imaginatively making us actors in the unfolding excitement, stories move us to action.

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/07/10/telling-stories-vs-telling-data/feed/1Are we more self-absorbed than previous generations, or just more self-aware?http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/06/26/are-we-more-self-absorbed-than-previous-generations-or-more-self-aware/
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/06/26/are-we-more-self-absorbed-than-previous-generations-or-more-self-aware/#commentsThu, 26 Jun 2014 16:38:42 +0000http://blogs.berkeley.edu/?p=12216For several years some psychologists have been arguing that Americans (especially American youth) of the modern era are more self-absorbed and self-interested than were Americans of an earlier era. (“Earlier” can mean pre-21st century, or pre-1960s, or pre-20th century, or whenever.) Much of the evidence they offer – heavily debated – come from compilations of personality surveys taken by college students. More recently, some researchers have offered evidence based on counting word types. The latest instance is an April paper in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (h/t Robb Willer) that codes and tabulates words in presidential State of the ... More >]]>http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/06/26/are-we-more-self-absorbed-than-previous-generations-or-more-self-aware/feed/2Work hours and the pay gaphttp://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/06/10/work-hours-and-the-pay-gap/
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/06/10/work-hours-and-the-pay-gap/#commentsTue, 10 Jun 2014 17:32:18 +0000http://blogs.berkeley.edu/?p=12183Twenty-five years ago, Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild coined the phrase “stalled revolution” to describe how far American women had come since the 1950s. What she meant (in my reading) is that, although gender relations in America, from workplace to bedroom, had changed radically, the pace of change had slowed tremendously.

The quicksand that bogged the gender revolution down was in the home, argued Hochschild, where the culture of traditional gender roles had women handling a “second shift” of home and parental duties in addition to the jobs they now held.

(Source)

I was reminded of this influential work by a newly published ... More >]]>

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/06/10/work-hours-and-the-pay-gap/feed/1Mourning 9/11 Victorian stylehttp://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/05/27/mourning-911-victorian-style/
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/05/27/mourning-911-victorian-style/#commentsTue, 27 May 2014 21:59:16 +0000http://blogs.berkeley.edu/?p=12147We have just witnessed the opening of the 9/11 memorial and museum at site of the destroyed World Trade Towers, an event that once more raises attention to how we Americans form our “collective memories.” (On collective memory, see here, here, here and here.)

In a recent suggestive essay in the Journal of Social History, Stacy Otto argues that New Yorkers have mourned the 2001 tragedy as New Yorkers had mourned the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in 1911.

Labor-union parade after Triangle fire, 1911

In the earlier disaster, with eerie similarities to 9/11, 146 garment workers, many of them women and children, died, often by jumping out of ... More >]]>

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/05/27/mourning-911-victorian-style/feed/1Bible readingshttp://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/05/14/bible-readings/
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/05/14/bible-readings/#commentsWed, 14 May 2014 17:17:13 +0000http://blogs.berkeley.edu/?p=12111A recent story noted that president of the Hobby Lobby company, the company that took its religious objections to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) all the way to the Supreme Court, is a leader in a campaign to put Bibles and Bible classes into American public schools. As you would expect, this move is getting push back from groups like the ACLU.

Controversy over Bible reading in public classrooms is far from new.

The latest controversy is yet one more episode in a long-, long-running series of conflicts over the Bible’s proper role, if any, in American public schools. The most ferocious such ... More >]]>

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/05/14/bible-readings/feed/3Old days, fast timeshttp://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/05/09/old-days-fast-times/
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/05/09/old-days-fast-times/#commentsFri, 09 May 2014 17:24:43 +0000http://blogs.berkeley.edu/?p=12099There’s a lot of discussion about speed these days – from the possible advantage of seconds that some users on the internet would get were broadband “net neutrality” to go away to the market-disrupting micro-mini-milli-second competition among “flash mob” stock traders to debates over the speed-up “bullet trains” might provide. It seems as if we are being dizzied by speed. Imagine, then, how Americans reacted to real speedup in the nineteenth century.

O. Winston Link

This musing is based on a few old maps that were posted on the web in 2012 and then went viral (e.g., here) in 2013. (That I am writing ... More >]]>